Wednesday, April 8, 2009

Personal Aside: Three Thoughts While Shaving.

1. Pro-Aborts Lose a Big One: But Thats Not News.

The news blackout on events that dont please the liberal Chicago media continued last week. Nary a mention of the decision of the reigning pro-aborts in the House to pull the big Omnibus bill from the floorwhich means a signal defeat for the Dems. You can bet your socks that if the bill had passed, it would occupy center stage in Chicago in both major newspapers, on TV. But no: nothing.

Earlier the Illinois Catholic Conference under the superb leadership of Bob Gilligan organized a pilgrimage to Springfield where citizen-lobbyists contacted their legislators. Not a line in the paper nor on radio or TV. Then the denouement when old hatchet-face, Barbara Flynn Currie the Dem majority leader jerked the bill. Also on the bill was the reigning queen of Republican pro-aborts whos in hock to Terry Cosgroves Personal PAC for getting her through the last election. Not a word in the media.

2. Newt Gingrich Becomes a Catholic. Try to Figure.

I dont know how to fathom this one. Knowing Gingrich whom I first met when he was a backbencher, I dont think anything he does anything can be separated from his all consuming ambition: to be president of the United States. Married three times in the past, telling Wife No. 1 he wanted a divorce when she was in the hospital for a cancer operation marrying No. 2 but then conducting an affair with soon-to-be Number 3, a Catholic, at the same time Bill Clinton was undergoing the Monica Lewinsky scandal. Now becoming a Catholicbut what about Wife No. 3, herself a Catholic who certainly surrendered membership in her faith by marrying Newt. Now hes a Catholic and shes not.

Throughout the career of Newt Gingrich the only summation of him that I value came from Henry Hyde who said Gingrich is 50% genius and 50% nuts. Hes a brilliant strategist sometimesand a braying ass sometimes: as when he took on the Speakership and decided at the same time to sell his books and a college course (after having raised the roof about a predecessors selling a book) bringing the funding of the government to a dead halt which Clinton benefited from then getting involved with a woman not his wife. And he still has the nerve to--. Incredible.

The best thing I can say is: listen to him for whatever good ideas spring forth but remember Hydes admonition and never ever consider supporting him for president.

The phrase selling out almost always involves compromising ones integrity or principles in exchange for success or personal gain. For a supposedly practicing Catholic, support of same-sex marriage is a no-no. Yet that is what Catholic Tom McNamee has done as editor of the Sun-Times editorial pageissued his support of a court action to duplicate Iowas.

Looking at the woeful state of the newspaper, it is a certainty that even with the most ignoble motives which I dont discount support of same-sex marriage is not going to harvest new readers. It is not unlike the decision of Sir Richard Rich who was promised the attorney-generalship of Wales if he betrayed Sir Thomas More. More said there could be great rewards bestowed by the King in return for Richard Richs testimony but, he added, for WALES? More went to the gallowsand Rich? Is he remembered except in the vilest way?

So I ask McNamee: You urge same-sex marriage. Will it gain a floodtide of homosexual readers? Is that going to return the paper to solvency? You know the answer better than I. Youre rather pathetic, you know.

2 comments:

As a Roman Catholic I am happy to welcome Newt to the Church. As a Catholic, I believe in redemption and well know that the Church does not exist for the perfect, but for sinners. I hope his conversion is deep, profound and abiding. I can imagine one of your old college professors advising,"Charity, Mr. Roeser, in all things, charity."

About Tom

Thomas F. Roeser is radio talk show host, writer, lecturer, teacher and former VP of The Quaker Oats Company of Chicago. A former John F. Kennedy Fellow, Harvard and Woodrow Wilson International Fellow, Princeton, N. J., Roeser is theauthor of the book Father Mac: The Life and Times of Ignatius D. McDermott. To read more about Tom, Click here.